Cameco interested in nuclear plants

- Uranium miner Cameco Inc. would consider investing in the Darlington or Pickering nuclear facilities under the right conditions, says chief executive Gerald Grandey.

Cameco owns 31.6 per cent of Bruce Power, which operates the Bruce nuclear generating station under lease from Ontario Power Generation.

"We through Bruce Power with our partners want to be constructive," Grandey said in an interview from Saskatoon. "By trying to be or offering to be helpful, one has to be thinking about or talking about ... what's going to happen with Pickering and Darlington.

"So when people ask the question: Are you interested? I respond very frankly: Yes."

So far, the matter hasn't been discussed with the government. A spokesperson for Energy Minister Dwight Duncan said some Cameco officials held a brief get-acquainted meeting with Duncan a week ago, but a sale or lease of the nuclear plants didn't come up.

Duncan himself said it is premature to talk about allowing private sector investment in Ontario nuclear power plants. A blue chip panel, which has yet to be appointed, will look at all the province's options, he said.

"We are not ruling anything in or out at this point. It doesn't surprise me that they have expressed that interest. Several steps that we have taken over the past few weeks are beginning to create confidence in investors, whether it's natural gas or it's renewable green sources," he said.

Grandey warned that several hurdles have to be cleared before Cameco and its Bruce Power partners would consider investing in another nuclear facility.

"There's lots of things that need to happen," he said. "We don't yet have a definition of where this government is going to go with electricity."

The role of government-owned Ontario Power Generation, which produces two-thirds of the province's power, has to be clarified, he said.

The Conservative government had promised to shrink OPG's market share to 35 per cent by 2012, but the Liberals say they won't sell any publicly owned electricity assets.

And the current wholesale electricity market is "too small to function as a meaningful market," he said.

That's discouraging a lot of investors.

"We're not getting as potential investors and current investors the right kind of signals to make too many decisions about what we're going to do," Grandey said.

But on the plus side, he said, Bruce Power provides a model of how a private firm can operate a nuclear plant in Ontario. Cameco would act through Bruce Power, whose other major partners are TransCanada Corp. and the OMERS pension fund.

Operating more than one facility in Ontario could produce efficiencies in maintenance, purchasing and staffing for Bruce Power, he said.

So if the policy questions could be sorted out, he said, "We would then be perfectly willing to sit down with the government and say: Is there a role here for the private sector and private investment, and if the answer to that is yes, is there a role for Bruce Power?"

Asked whether he'd want to buy or lease, Grandey said he "wouldn't rule out any structure" at this stage.